ROME UNDER PAGANISM AND THE POPES.

THIS is a medley of history, rhetoric, fiction, and theology, set in a sort of framework, about as artist-like as that by which the "principal machinist" introduces a succession of panoramic pic- tures in a pantomime. The intention of the writer was to give " a vivid idea of the revolution by which the Rome of the Cmsars was reduced to this prostrate state [of ruin], and in which the Rome of the Popes had its beginning." His scheme seems to have been, to produce a grand romance, whose substance and characters should be historic, while the arrangement, connexion, and general treatment, should owe their influence to the imagination. What he has really done is, to borrow the most striking scenes of Roman history or Popish tradition from historians or monkish writers ; to take St. Peter for his hero, and some of the most remarka- ble persons of the Imperial annals for his actors, and pass the whole in review before the reader in a sort of showman style. The passages exhibitive of history are either taken bodily, or abridged, or translated, from historians ; the philosophical disqui- sitions, by which the compiler aims at showing the intellect of the age, or the theological passages, where be tries his hand upon Daniel and the Apocalypse, are mostly lifted in a similar way direct from other writers; and the occasional dialogues or discourse, by which a dramatic air is attempted to be given to the work, to- gether with the reflections and running commentary by which it is endeavoured to cement the materials together, are the compiler's

Own.

A complete work can only be achieved by presenting many things which are necessary, even if unattractive ; and a complete view of a subject can only be obtained by submitting to the labour of mas- tering these drier parts. But an interesting book might be pro- duced upon Roman history, by taking only a series of its striking pictures or leading events, and connecting them together with a short thread of remarks. To accomplish this successfully, how- ever, would require taste to select, reading to supply the inter- sticial narrative, and a thorough knowledge of the subject, de- rived from study if not amounting to original research, in order to fuse the whole into a uniform substance. These qualities, or the results of these qualities, are deficient in the volumes before us. Whether the author has read many books, we cannot tell ; but he has fallen in with a good many authors, from whom he transcribes or transposes largely : not, indeed, without acknowledg- ment, for he parades in his preface a list of writers from SALLUST to GUIZOT, and also refers pretty freely in foot-notes ; but he occasionally quotes a bit in inverted commas, when, we suspect, his obligation extends to the entire context, and sometimes refers to an original author as his authority, when he appears to be indebted to GIBBON both for his text and reference.

This, however, does not directly affect the readable attraction of the book ; but, by fixing upon it the character of a mere compila- tion, explains its deficiency in wholeness of character, as well as its crudeness of treatment and arrangement. Slender regard is paid to order. Towards the end of the first volume, we are presented with Belisarius and Totila the Goth ; and we have the same subject—ruined and devastated Rome, with the same actors, towards the end of the second volume. But there are greater faults than those of outward form : every thing is incongruous and disjointed. There is no dramatic consistency in the persons : from the Christian apostle to the Roman soldier or converted Jew, they all talk in the same style of inflated rhetoric. There is no keeping, in subject, matter, or manner. After listening to an oration, in the form of a discourse designed to present some view of ancient opinion—or to "restore," as the architects say, some ma- terial view of ancient Rome—we are plunged into an historical nar- rative or a political disquisition. No regard is paid to the authen- ticity of the facts : a credulous tale of some impossible and monkish miracle is told, not as what it is, but with as much apparent respect as a narrative by TACITUS. The style throughout has no dramatic relation to the subjects, nor is it a reflex of the author's mind. It fluctuates with his quotations ; we pass from GIBBON'S stateliness to the feeble commonplace of a miracle-monger or to the dryness of a theologian. The writer's own style is un- certain—sometimes on stilts, and sometimes grovelling, so that we are almost inclined to suspect that he even borrows his inflation— not the general character of it, about which there is no doubt, but particular passages.

Though we speak thus of the book, it is not to be inferred that it is altogether devoid of interest or power. With such a subject as the decline and fall of Rome, (for there is little about the true rise of the Popedom,) and with such writers as GIBBON and SISMONDI to transcribe, and such narrators as TACITUS and SUBTONICS to follow, saying nothing of other authors, it would be absolutely impossible to produce a compilation that should be without interest in its parts. All we mean is, that what depends upon the compiler is done badly, and that we have rarely seen so much self-confidence in undertaking so great a work so very poorly borne out by the result.

In any passages we should choose to quote from Rome under Paganism and the Popes, it is probable that many readers would

have met with the substance before in some shape or other. We will therefore take one which the reader may compare directly with GranoN's description of the Coliseum ; and another, the state of Rome after Totila's withdrawal, in which, while the facts are drawn from the same source, the imaginary incidents are possibly supplied by the compiler,—though some of the images seem to haunt our memory.

THE COLISEUM.

The shrine sacred to these rites of Pagan religion was the Coliseum, so called from its gigantic dimensions. It was a building of an eliptic figure, 564 feet in length and 467 in breadth, founded on fourscore arches, and rising, with four successive orders of architecture, to the height of 140 feet. The outside of the edifice was incrusted with marble and decorated with statues. The slopes of the vast concave, which formed the inside, were filled and sur- rounded with sixty or eighty rows of seats of marble, likewise covered with cushions, and capable of receiving with ease above fourscore thousand spec- tators. Sixty-four vomitories, (tor by that name the doors were very aptly distinguished,) poured forth the immense multitudes ; and the entrances, passages, and staircases, were contrived with such exquisite skill, that each person, whether of the senatorial, the equestrian, or plebeian order, arrived at his destined place without trouble or confusion.

The lowest row of seats next the arena, assigned to the senators and foreign ambassadors, was called the podium; there also, on an elevated platform, was the Emperor's throne, shaded by a canopy, like a pavilion ; the place of the manager, or editor, of the games, as he was called ; and reserved seats for the vestal virgins. The podium projected over the wall which surrounded the arena, and was raised between twelve and fifteen feet above it, secured with a breastwork or parapet of gold or gilt bronze, against the irruption of wild beasts. As a further defence, the arena was surrounded with an iron rail, and a canal. The equitea, or second order of nobles, sat in fourteen rows behind the senators. The rest of the people sat behind, upon seats called popularia, rising tier above tier to a gallery, with a colonnade in front, running all round the amphitheatre, immediately under the velarium, or awning, and generally occupied by females, soldiers, and attendants. A certain number of prretorian guards were also posted at the cunei or sections, and contributed, by their glittering armour and martial air, to the effect and splendour of the scene. Nigh to the amphitheatre was a place called the spoliarum, to which the gladiators who were killed or mortally wounded were dragged by a book. Nothing was omitted which could be in any respect subservient to the con-

venience and pleasure of the spectators. They were protected from the sun and rain by an ample canopy, the velarium, occasionally drawn over their heads. The air was continually refreshed by the playing of fountains; and an infinity of small tubes dispersed a shower of the most delicious perfumes, which descended on the languishing spectators like aromatic dews. The arena, in the centre of which stood the idol of Jupiter, formed the stage, and derived its name from being usually strewed with the finest sand.

During the progress of the games, it assumed the most different forms in quirk succession. At one moment it seemed to ride out of the earth like the garden of the Hesperides, and was afterwards broken into the rocks and caverns of Thrace. The subterrancons pipes conveyed an inexhaustible supply of water ; and what l.ad just before appeared a level plain might be suddenly converted into a wide lake, covered with armed vessels, and replenished with the monsters of the deep. As to the decoration of the scents, we read, on various occasions, that the whole furniture of the amphitheatre consisted either of silver, or of gold, or of amber. An eye-witness affirms that the nets de- signed as a defence against the wild beasts were of gold wire; that the por- ticoes were gilded ; and that the belt or circle that divided the various ranks of spectators from each other was studded with a precious mosaic of beautiful stones.

ROME IN THE SIXTH CENTURY.

It was towards the close of this interval that Belisarius felt a desire to visit and survey with his own eyes the ruins of a place that had been the theatre of so much grandeur and renown ; and with this view he sallied forth from the sea-port at the head of a strong squadron of his guards.

A marble wilderness extended on every side as far as the eye could reach, strewed with the ruins of Vitruvian villas, temples, and aqueducts; the waste water of the latter had filled all the vallics and overflowed the low grounds of the Campagna, converting into marshes and mantling pools those regions which erewhile bad abounded with all the delights of the Hesperides. The thoroughfares of the nations were silent and lonely as the double line of tombs through which they passed. The towers and inscriptions over the gates had been torn down, and their bronze portals carried off in the plunder-train of the barbarian. The rock-built walls of Rome lay low; and the tramp of their war-horses was muffled by the grass, as Belisarius and his troops rode under a succession of dismantled arches, down towards the Forum, along the "sacred way."

The fox looked out from the casements of the Palatine, and barked sharply at the intruders as they rode on ; wolves prowled through the vacant streets, or littered in the palace halls ; wild dogs hunted in packs, through the great circus, through the baths, along the Campus Martins, and on to the gardens of Sallust and Maecenas, through the promenades of the Suburra. Outlandish beasts— as if escaped from the menageries and keeps of the amphitheatres—lay sleeping and enjoying themselves in the sunshine of the porticos, or tore one another to pieces, as the factious had done of old, around the rostrum, and in the assem- bly-place of the people ; ethers growled and snarled, and gloated over the un- buried carcasses and whitening skeletons of the dead. Ravens and vultures desisted from feeding their sanguinary nestlings, to hoot the warriors, as they wound slowly among the prostrate columns and entablatures of temples that encumbered the ascent to the Capitol, or, starting from their perching-places on trophy and triumphal arch, hovered and flapped their sable wings above the plumage of their helmets. Once more the Roman eagle soars above the Tar- peian tower—that cry from whence, for a thousand years, it had flown forth to carnage ; and the martial bugle makes the field of Mars resound again. But instead of the warlike response of legions—clamouring to be led against the Semite or the Parthian—there broke out a hideous medley of yells and howl- ing, yelp, bark, and roar, onttopped by the shrill cries of ill-omened birds, startled from their roosts in the sanctuary recesses, and from the niches and cornices of the Senate-house. The warriors listened for some human sound. In vain they listened, and listened again. There was the Palatine, the Forum, the Capitol, the Campus Martins, and the Tiber, flowing under the beauteous summer-sky beneath the Tarpeian cliff; but the Legions, the Emperors, the Senate, and the Roman People, where were they?